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Hyundai Motor and Kia have made a strategic investment in VAST Data, extending an existing relationship focused on software and data systems for autonomous driving and robotics.
Their autonomous mobility division, 42dot, has already been using VAST's platform in production for advanced driver assistance systems research and autonomous driving workloads. The investment follows several years of operational use, during which 42dot moved those workloads onto a single data platform built with NVIDIA infrastructure.
That consolidation brought advanced driver assistance systems and large language model development together on one platform after they had previously been spread across different vendor systems. The companies said the shift halved storage needs and enabled 42dot to expand within its existing data centre footprint instead of building or leasing more capacity.
The deal gives VAST another strategic backer following its Series F fundraising, which valued the company at USD $30 billion. Existing investors in that round included NVIDIA, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and NEA.
Data demands
The investment reflects growing pressure on carmakers to manage the data generated by autonomous vehicle development. A single sensor-equipped test vehicle can produce terabytes of information each day from cameras, LiDAR, radar, and ultrasonic sensors, and that volume rises sharply across larger fleets.
Those workloads also place different demands on the same infrastructure. Raw sensor data, video clips, model validation, software update synchronisation, and telematics each require different levels of throughput, latency, and oversight.
VAST's role in Hyundai Motor and Kia's software stack sits within 42dot, the group's autonomous mobility and software unit. Its systems run on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD infrastructure using NVIDIA Hopper, with VAST providing the data layer for research and development.
VAST also supports data replication across 42dot's data centre sites and allows simulation, training, and validation pipelines to operate from the same namespace without copies, according to the companies. The approach is intended to reduce duplication as artificial intelligence projects scale.
Executive Vice President Hokeun Chung of HKMC's Future Strategy Division said the investment followed direct operational experience with the system.
"Our journey with VAST started as a customer," said Chung. "Consolidating our ADAS and language model development onto one platform changed how quickly our teams can move from data collection to a validated model. Our work in autonomous driving and robotics depends on being able to use the data our vehicles generate quickly and reliably, and as data volumes grow it requires infrastructure that can keep pace. This investment reflects our confidence, earned in production, that VAST is the right long-term partner for that scale."
From customer to investor
The move from user to investor is notable in a market where automotive groups are increasingly taking stakes in suppliers whose tools underpin artificial intelligence development. For VAST, it also provides a reference customer in one of the most data-intensive industrial uses of AI, where software training depends on fast access to large volumes of sensor and video data.
Hyundai Motor and Kia have been expanding their software and robotics work as carmakers seek to control more of the technology stack behind assisted and autonomous driving. Data management has become central to that effort because fragmented storage systems can slow development and create duplication across engineering teams.
VAST argues that older high-performance computing storage systems can become a bottleneck when large fleets of AI processors are waiting for data. Its architecture is designed to keep those processors supplied without splitting data across multiple storage environments.
Renen Hallak, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VAST Data, linked the investment to broader changes in industrial AI.
"The companies building physical AI such as vehicles, robots and machines, are running into the same data problem enterprises hit years ago, and at a much larger scale. We remain committed to breaking decades-old trade-offs to deliver the data infrastructure stack for AI. HKMC's decision to invest in VAST, having already seen the benefits of our technology, shows that our infrastructure is core to their future and capable of meeting the increasing needs of AI," said Hallak.